CIO Best Practices: Enabling Strategic Value with Information Technology

Very useful book, it gives you some great insight into IT governance, which is very important in todays world.

As an accounting student without much IT experience, the book was a very difficult read at times. Considering that it was written for chief information officers, however, I think the authors actually explained the concepts very clearly, without getting overly technical. The first chapter gives a good procedure for aligning the IT department's goals with those of the firm. It also gives guidelines for effective project management. Chapter two is probably the most difficult for someone with very little IT experience to grasp. It explains enterprise architecture and its link to corporate governance. The third chapter was my personal favorite. It explains how to create an agile IT department using three "agility loops" with supporting processes. These procedures allow the firm to stay strategically focused while creating new processes and improving existing processes. I didn't really care for chapter four, which describes strategy mapping and explains how to use activity-based-costing as a tool for implementing strategic IT finance. I found the fifth chapter more interesting as it defines the balanced scorecard and explains how to apply it to the IT department. Chapter six gives an interesting explanation of the need to place a value on customers and details the procedures and formulas needed to do so. Chapter seven gives reasons why a firm should consider outsourcing and outlines a plan for outsourcing once the decision to do so has been made. The final chapter describes how to measure the ROI of an IT project and recommends managing a group of projects as you would an investment portfolio. Overall, the book seems well written and I would recommend it for CIOs and others who are interested in IT management.

As someone who has been a CIO four times, served as an interim CIO too many time to count, wrote "CIO Wisdom" and will be coming out with "CIO Perspectives", I would like to fully endorse "CIO Best Practices". Somewhere in the book it states "all CIOs live in a competitive world and excellent customer relationship management has become a competitive advantage" This book accomplished "excellent customer relationship management" by always keeping the reader in mind. It is well written, and contains depth that could only be written by CIOs.

This book demonstrates the special knowledge and unique skills required to succeed as an exceptional best practices CIO. It gives the rationale for the enterprise-wide scope of that position, and lays out the recommended practices and concepts as well as case studies and practical examples of the application of these ideas, testifying to the rich experience and insight of its IT executive authors. "CIO Best Practices" is a useful reference and guide for both newly appointed and experience CIOs, as well as to aspiring CIOs. It is among the top group of recommended readings for all senior executives.

The title accurately reflects the contents of the book. There is a definite emphasis on the practical aspects of the CIO. This work is a good read both for the budding IT professional who is setting his/her sights on the CIO role or for the CEO, COO, CFO, who needs to better understand the critical role the CIO can and should play in an organization. The CIO's whose work is included in the book are a who's who of practicing CIO's. One would do well to read, and heed, what they have to say.